Sorry this has been posted elsewhere - meant to post in here as you are at same stage or slightly ahead of my mum.
I know the answers will be variable for this but wanted to hear what happened to your tumours If you had chemo pre surgery.
My mum has had her third chemo (FEC-T) just under two weeks ago. Her first session seemed to reduce her tumour quite a lot. She had 100% FEC but then had to have reduced 80%FEC from then on due to infection. Her second session seemed to reduce it some more but maybe not as much. This was all her own opinion. The tumour was then crudely measured and registrar agreed it had shrunk since inital measurement. However it is not know whether this is due to first and second session or just the first alone. I’m concerned that the reduced chemo isn’t work effectively. Since her third session almost two weeks ago, my mum ‘thinks’ it may be a little smaller. She goes onto T next.
I wondered what any of you had experienced. Did the tumour shrink more dramatically at first then not so much for following sessions or was it steady throughout?
I’m sorry to hear that you’re so worried about the dose reduction. This might be a bit hard to follow, but I think there’s a mathematical explanation for why the change in size is becoming more difficult for your mum to accurately guess.
If the tumour reduced by 50% the first time and then reduced by another 50% the second time, and so on, the difference would seem much smaller the second time because the overall size of the tumour was smaller to begin with.
Think of a pint of milk. If I throw 50% of my milk away I now have half a pint. Second session: If I throw 50% away I now have a quarter of a pint. Third session: throw away 50% leaves me with one eighth of a pint. The first time the reduction is huge a half pint down - but the second time with the same percentage of reduction the amount of difference is only a quarter pint. So each time the milk goes down by exactly the same percentage, but the difference is harder and harder to detect.
The first time you’re spotting that a whole half a pint has gone, but by session 3 you’re down to trying to spot a much much smaller amount - even though it’s exactly the same percentage reduction.
I think we could all spot a big reduction like the first 50%. You’d say smaller for absolutely sure.
The second time you’d say well it’s a bit smaller.
The third time you’d say well only a tiny bit smaller.
By the time you get to the third session the difference you are trying to measure is tiny, so tiny that I think it would be impossible to judge whether the size is 60% down, 50% down, or 20% down.
The only real way to tell would be for it to be scanned and then have someone work out the actual volume, guesswork will worry you loads and it won’t help.
I hope you get what I’m trying to explain here! It sounds like you are being a wonderfully caring daughter, please try not to worry too much (hard I know) and talk to the doctors, they sound like they’re doing a good job of caring for your mum. Xxx
Thanks PETA. Yes I understand what you’re saying. I also realise that it’s not just length and width that are reducing but also depth. Is it sometime not all cancer cells also? I think I read a post where it never shrank much, but when they removed it, the cells were dead. Hopefully if we see some more reduction with this last session, it means the strays will have been mopped up. That’s my main concern - it’s effect on lymph nodes and stray cells.